Inequalities, Mobilization, and Citizenship: A Comparative Study of Europe and China

LIA CNRS/ENS Lyon-CASS Post-Western Sociology in France and in China 2017February 6-10 th ENS Lyon Doing fieldwork and crossed practices in Post-Western Sociology (3) : Inequalities, mobilization and citizenship Inequalities, mobilizations and subjectivation in Europe and in China Professor Laurence Roulleau-Berger Research Director at CNRS, Triangle ENS de Lyon French Director of the International Laboratory CNRS-ENS Lyon/CASS Post-Western Sociologies in France and in China

1. Urban borders, captivity and mobility • 2. Economic uncertainty, flexibility and violence • 3. Youth, risk society and subjectivation • 4. Mobilization and citizens’s competencies • 5. Collective action and riots contents

In European and Chinese Cities, social, ethnic and economic borders are appearing and producing diffracted inequalities and situations of injustice. We will consider the intersectionality between spatial segregation, socio-economic segregation and ethno-racial segregation. Economic flexibility and job insecurity, ethnic and social discriminations are distancing young descendants of immigrants in France and young migrants in China from labour markets and public space.Indeed, the careers of young descendants of immigrants in Europe and young migrants in China are constructed from biographical bifurcations and reversibilites which means a process of subjectivation where self ordeals blur the aspirations for autonomy and insidiously place individuals in situations of compulsion to "be oneself.” When descendants of immigrants in Europe and young migrants in China cannot face tocompulsion to "be oneself”,rioting is then a way to enter the public space. Revolt and riots express a demand for justice and citizenship and they can be seen as the exacerbation of local micro-mobilisations. introduction

In the neighborh In the neighborhoods of European cities, particularly in the working class suburbs of French cities in the process of ghettoisation, the process of spatial, social and economic segregation have increased over the last twenty years. In France, in working class suburbs, the Maghreb, sub-Saharan Africans, Turks and Asians represent grated immigrant populations subject to significant spatial segregation. Between 1990 and 1999, this situation is exacerbated for Turks, Algerians and Moroccans, but diminishes for Tunisians and stagnates for sub-Saharan Africans. 1. Urban borders, captivity, mobility

In Chinese cities the urban village looks like an emblematic form of urban segregation in Chinese cities.There are now two generations of “urban villages” in which migrants form a new urban underclass and experience a new poverty. Today, two specific urban forms have appeared: the old urban villages, which exist in the metropolis, and the “ant colonies” (Lian Si, 2009) or new urban villages which appear on the outskirts of megalopolises. More and more urban villages appear in megalopolises with the very rapid process of urbanisation, and more and more are destroyed. 1. Urban borders , captivity and mobility

In European cities descendants of immigrants are living in segregated in working class suburbs, they look captive in the city but they also circulate in the urban spaces of varying legitimacy by producing invisibilized urban skills, so they oscillate between captive situations and spatial mobility in the City. More especially their urban life is organized around isolation, segregation and partial integration in the City (Hannerz, 1983). New international migrants are producing new forms of local and transnational mobility. In China young Chinese migrants, especially the less skilled, are caught up in a variety of double-bind situations that continue to impose urban, spatial and occupational mobility. Their migratory careers are organized from the production of mobility skills which appears as a way of resisting forms of urban segregation and subordination on labor markets in internal migration. 1. Urban borders , captivity and mobility

In the EU countries we can speak of a double process of economic insecurity and ethnic discrimination that also combine to produce situations of unemployment and underemployment for young descendants of immigrants and migrant workers. The proliferation of precarious forms of employment contribute today to “pulverize the conditions of the work contract” (Beck, 1992) due to the plurality and flexibility of transitional employments.The divisions between European workers and foreign workers or workers of foreign origin participate in the overvisibilisation of an ethnic membership and the invisibilisation of a professional identity. Less-qualified workers are subjected to dominations, symbolic and identity-threatening violence, and discrimination even racism in their respective labour markets. It means also ethnic segmentation that is to say hierarchical proliferation of “ethnic niches” (Waldinger 1994, Waldinger, Bozorgmehr, 1996). 2. Economic uncertainty, flexibility and violence

The initial results of the 2013 survey of Generation 2010 show that in 2013, that is, three years after leaving the educational system, 22% are seeking employment. This is the highest level ever observed in CEREQ surveys of insertion into active life. However, first employment is neither more precarious nor less well paid (Christophe Barret, Florence Ryk, Noémie Volle, Bref, n° 319, 2014). In 2011 young people of North African origin have on average lower initiale.Their education levels are more likely to leave school without a diploma, compared with original French youth or those from Southern Europe. Educational level of inequality can be explained by their socio-economic background and spatial segregation. 2. Economic uncertainty, flexibility and violence

40% of young descendants of North African are children of workers against 12% for original French; 23% live in sensitive urban zones and they know on average almost 27 months of unemployment during their first 7 years of active life against less than 11 for the original French. Young people from South Europe develop better entry paths into the workforce. The modes of access to employment are gendered, racialized.The cultural background, combined with the social origin, the sex and the generational position, participates actively in defining forms of differentiated and prioritized accessibility to labour markets. These forms of accessibility are built through "systemic discrimination”, “societal discrimination” and “situationnel discrimination”on labour markets. . 2. Economic uncertainty, flexibility and violence

In China, because the « Chinese experience » (Li Peilin,2012) and « compressed modernity » (Chang, 2010) the effects of "economic transition", the very rapid evolution of Chinese labor regimes, the ever-increasing importance of economic competition, the intensification of geographical mobility, the movements between rural labor markets and urban labor markets are transforming the social stratification system (Lu Xueyi, 2002), social and employment relationships. In the 2011 Chinese Social Survey we see that temporary agency work is growing. Only 41.1% of young workers would have signed a fixed-term contract (CDD) and 13.8% a permanent contract. Informal jobs are predominantly occupied by migrant workers in private enterprises. 2. Economic uncertainty, flexibility and violence

The hegemonic regimes of work (Shen Yuan, 2011) produce domination and violence on labour markets and the figure of the young migrant worker or nongmingong has thus become truly emblematic in the apprehension of the processes leading to the reconfiguration, segmentation and increased uncertainty, flexibility and precariousness of Chinese labour markets. • Today there is also a new category of young people in precarious situations .These young people can be migrants or urban; the majority of whom do not have an urban hukou, the latter participates in the production of discriminations produced by local authorities. Today, working conditions for young graduates, especially skilled young migrants, continue to deteriorate (Chai Guoyun, Deng Guoying, 2011) . 2. Economic uncertainty, flexibility and violence

In China the process of precariousness affecting young people would result from a misalignment between the training system and the employment system (Liu Yuzhao, Wang Ping, Ying Kewei, 2009) the effects of hukou 户口 and discrimination in the modes of access to employment (Liu Shiding, 2012), transformations social policies, and the effects of monopoly on certain segments of the labor market. • In China as in Europe less-qualified descendants of immigrants and young migrants are subjected to dominations, symbolic and identity-threatening violence, and discrimination even racism in their respective labour markets. Symbolic violence is constructed in professional relationships by means of phenomena of horizontal and vertical social disqualification, alienation of identities, contempt and humiliation which could produce revolt and riots (Roulleau-Berger, 2010). 2. Economic uncertainty, flexibility and violence

In China and in Europe, sociologists have clearly shown that young people are frequently faced with social risks: the less qualified may not find a “position”, those who are better qualified often have to make do with youth-labelled employment areas in which they cannot really start their professional socialisation. Competition has become more severe; diplomas have lost their value while social desires and ambitions have continued to soar - over the last thirty years for young Europeans and the last ten years for Chinese youth (Li Chunling, Wang Boqing, 2010). Such systemic disqualification has been attenuated in the middle, but it has greatly impacted the lower classes, especially young unqualified migrants in China and young people of foreign descent in France. French sociologists describe it as structural poverty or structural social exile (Castel, 2009). 3. Youth, risk society and subjectivation

In contexts of economic and social risks and increasing discriminations and inequalities biographical trajectories then continue to diversify by producing complex itineraries et and reinfore social, ethnic borders. Foremost this process of individuation is characterized by a proliferation of biographical bifurcations and reversibilities of situations. Indeed, the careers of young descendants of immigrants in Europe and young migrants in China are constructed from bifurcations that correspond to the conjunction of steps in the City, that is to say changes on urban labor markets (Roulleau-Berger, 2011). 3. Youth, risk society and subjectivation

In Western Europe the phenomenon of social disqualification first produced disillusionment before actively contributing to blurring the aspirations of young people and shaping situations of double constraint in the relationship to work The least qualified – often condemned to becoming unskilled workers – thus refuse to engage in work which disqualifies them and situate themselves in a distanced relationship to factory work. Moving from autonomy as aspiration to autonomy as a condition or constraint appears as a characteristic movement of neo-liberal societies, this transformation took place very quickly in Chinese society where the "cult of excellence" its peak. If autonomy became a condition as competition at the same time as the welfare state entered crisis in France, it also became a condition as a competition in China when developing a market economy. 3. Youth, risk society and subjectivation

In China when autonomy appears as a strong aspiration among younger generations, it becomes almost immediately a condition. This quasi-immediacy weakens social, family and community bonds, defeats solidarity, exacerbates competitions among young people and produces individual and collective fears. And especially young Chinese migrants are facing the ordeal of loss: loss of a job, loss of family ties due to distances with orginal regions, loss of peers due to repeated mobility in different places, loss of self . But because of internal mobility, geographical, professional and social, which constantly produces biographical crossroads, young Chinese migrants move from one situation to another which can be different and produce loss of self but also of the excess of self. 3. Youth, risk society and subjectivation

These almost contradictory self ordeals blur the aspirations for autonomy and insidiously place individuals in situations of compulsion to "be oneself." This ordeal of loss is multiplied in the context of precariousness of the lives of young Chinese migrants and reveals inequalities of exposure to objective and subjective risks in the face of flexibility and the injunction to "social success" in China as in Europe 3. Youth, risk society and subjectivation

“ European and Chinese cities also produce various intermediate spaces of apartness and marginalisation, in which individual and collective actors develop urban skills and take ownership of places and symbolic, economic, social and religiousness –in French suburbs- ressources. Some of these spaces, serve as moral areas (Park, 1921), compensate for loss of “self”, discrepancies and gaps within public programs and institutions and find a way through the fissures of low-legitimacy spaces. How to pass moral and social borders? To face to the compulsion to "be oneself”young descendants of immigrants are really active in producing in European (Italian and French) cities intermediate spaces (Roulleau-Berger, 1999, 2011) which contain discreet social forms, scattered creativities and are a clear case of assymetric tactics used by the “weakest ”citizens again the “strongest”. 4. Intermediate spaces and citizens’s competencies

“ • In these spaces, mutual recognition is slowly built based on shared norms, albeit non-mainstream norms. Individual capacities are then collectively claimed and submitted for public approval and evaluation. By using different scales and contexts, individual capacities become societal capacities (Ricoeur 2004). • Intermediate spaces then bring to light how invisiblized young peole in Chinese cities (Bellot, 2015) and European cities can empower themselves and claim the right to capabilities (Sen, 1992) in producing moral economies. • These spaces reveal “interactional citizenship” (Ong, 1999) through subjectivation, reflexivity and mobilization of individuals fined as inventive and creative in ways of “coping” or tactics used by the “weakest" against the “strongest” (De Certeau 1980; Bastide, 2015). 4. Intermediate spaces and citizens’s competencies

“ • In these intermediate spaces, social fears nourish the feeling of having failed, disappointments and disappointments that remain internalized. Young people could develop resources for collective actions, revolts or social movements as is the case in a democratic context. • In China, the ordeal of loss the self anesthesia young Chinese migrants endowed with strong capacities of action and mobilization that must first be used in economic and social competition. 4. Intermediate spaces and citizens’s competencies

5. Collective action and urban riots New Social Protests in China More and more export-focused companies have closed and their workers, most of them migrants, have been laid off. Young migrants have protested and faced the police, in particular in the Pearl and Yangtse delta cities, such as Shenzhen, Dongguan, Huizhou. Now, riots and urban social movements occur in all Chinese provinces. Second-generation of migrants bear the sufferings and humiliations of their parents and, while outraged, have developed a set of skills to resist and fight oppression and injustice. They are also increasingly conscious of their social rights and their level of aspirations is higher and higher (Liu Neng, 2008, 2009; Cai He, Liu Linping, Wang Xiangdong, 2009). Workers, often from the same communities, are lodged in factory dormitories, giving them the possibility to set up collective actions (Pun Ngai,2005) to fight for their rights and express strong resentment against the involvement of foreign capital. These workers fight their local government and global capitalism, while young migrants develop new working-class cultures of resistance

5. Collective action and urban riots Collective action and riots in Europe • Democracies are slowly crumbling under the assaults of unemployment, labor insecurity and discriminations. Public space in cities has become the main place to express individual and collective fears and uncertainties as well as social contempt. • Social conflicts happen when citizens –especially descendants of immigrants and migrants- can no longer deal with social and economic situations of double-bind challenges they have to face, with the compulsion “to be oneself”. • Institutions produce political intent to criminalise social misery (Sala Pala, 2006) create eviction and stigmatisation, especially against young unemployed people from working class housing projects and migrants who feel vulnerable to racism, unemployment and a society which does not give them any space. • In Western European cities, such as those of France or Spain, social conflicts originate in different political, social and economic spaces. Riots are a moment of “political actualization” when new forms of collective action are built on the margins of the conventional political field, when feelings of injustice combine with requests for respect (Kokoreff, 2008; Roulleau-Berger, 2004).

Rioting is then a way to enter the public space, to pass borders from “invisible” spaces to “visible” spaces. Urban riots express a demand for justice and citizenship and they can be seen as the exacerbation of local micro-mobilisations, or as revolts against being ascribed to irrelevant, inaccurate or unwanted roles. These riots cannot be reduced to being infra-political, they illustrate the fragility and vulnerability of political representation and the failure of former social regulations. They are not only the consequences of a crisis, they could be the turmoil accompanying the birth of a new society. In recent years, acts of urban violence have been on the rise again while the economic situation has deteriorated in working class neighbourhoods. Finally we have to mention a new phenomena : the apparition of young “kamikaz” in European public space. 5. Collective action and urban riots

Less qualified young people living in segregated neighbourhoods, the long-term unemployed, unauthorised migrants all express different demands for recognition and are more or less visible or quiet in the public space. They are producing « grammars of public recognition ».These demands arise from social, economic and ethnical inequalities and the experience of disrespect, social domination and recognition-denial. Sociologists from Western Europe, especially France, have increasingly been led to think of collective action, social movements and riots as representing a whole in the present day societal context. 5. Collective action and urban riots

French Metropolis like Chinese Metropolis become the arena in which battles are fought for social and civic recognition. Struggles over hegemony produce ever-increasing inequalities between social groups which are distant from each other and which have constructed themselves against a background of differentiated access to social, economic and symbolic resources as well as differentiated access to knowledge and urban capabilities or competencies. So what about new social, political, economic and moral borders? What about different grammars of justice and injustice, of decency and indecency in Europe and in China? Conclusion

Inequalities, Mobilization, and Citizenship: A Comparative Study of Europe and China